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Calvin Harris
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I Created Disco 4 ( 2007 )
Merrymaking At My Place / Colours / This Is The Industry / Girls / Acceptable In The 80s / Neon Rocks / Traffic Cops / Vegas / I Created Disco / Disco Heat / Vault Character / Certified / Love Souvenir / Electro Man
I could be really offensive and say this electro pop album is music for morons who only like this music because some other moron told them to. I could also say that Calvin Harris has played virtually every festival on earth, released a couple of singles that have done reasonably well and doesn't actually claim to have created disco. He's being ironic. Or was it tongue-in-cheek? Anyway, Calvin Harris, as his song 'Acceptable In The 80s' hints at, is trying to recapture, as many are, that period for a couple of three years in the early eighties when blokes stood still onstage and played keyboards for a living. Calvin Harris by the way is twenty three years old. By my calculation, when Human League were releasing 'Dare', I was only eight years old. Calvin Harris had yet to be born. By the time The Pet Shop Boys released their debut album, I was about to start secondary school, Calvin Harris had just been born. Lucky world. Purely and simply, this is music for going out to rather than music to listen to. Whereas LCD Soundsystem make records you can listen AND dance to, Calvin Harris makes music for the dancefloor, where a lyric such as 'I got all the girls, I got all the girls, I got all the girls' will no doubt go down a treat. Human League, Thomas Dolby, etc, etc - wrote tunes. Calvin Harris doesn't write tunes so much as write riffs on his keyboards. There are very few memorable songs as such here, songs which if took apart and transposed to acoustic guitar, would still stand up. Well, you might feel silly singing 'Don't You Want Me' by The Human League' on acoustic guitar, but the tune would survive. Even the admittedly enjoyable likes of 'Acceptable In The 80s' doesn't have a tune. How could you play this on acoustic? How stupid would the songs combined total of around three different sentences that pass for lyrics sound?
'Vegas' sees Calvin take off his own 'Acceptable In The 80s', the title track sounds like it was composed by a fourteen year old on a Commodore Amiga computer, remember them? You'd have some spotty kid fumbling around creating a few basic beats dreaming of being on the radio. Step forward Mr Calvin Harris! These tunes have such long introductions as well, what's that all about? You're bored before the vocals even come in, surely some kind of mistake? 'Merry Making At My Place' is one of the finer songs here outside of the two admittedly catchy singles, even though it seems to have borrowed a great deal of its ideas, if not execution, from the superior LCD Soundsystem. At least Calvin remembers to pack in a bass line this time around. Other highlights? Well, it's difficult to think of any. Too little distinguishes one tune from the next and obviously, i'm using the word 'tune' lightly. 'This Is The Industry' I suppose with a fair wind could follow the two hits into the charts. It's the exact same formula, after all.
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| Readers Comments baz You B******! I was gonna mention the LCD Soundsystem comparison to "Merrymaking at my place" in my wee review, ah well. Least you know I havn't knicked it from you, I promise! Obviously this isn't LCD Soundsystem (what recent electro-other genre can compare?) but its fun you know 4/10 is needlessly harsh. You better have a dance-soul :P. Keep up the good work. jwarehand@gmail.com I haven't heard the album, and I don't particularly like his music, but I did see Calvin Harris perform on the BBC coverage of Glastonbury: it was an acoustic version (just him and a bloke with a guitar) of "The Girls". And it worked, really well. |
this page last updated 13/08/07
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